Archive for February 2005

OK, I’m writing the tour stuff, honestly I am, and I apologise for the uncharacteristic delay in myself.

The point of this entry is just to mention that I’m having problems with my email, because NTL are having problems with their own actual selves, and so if you send me an email right now, I won’t get it. I don’t know if you get emails that I send either though. It’s like when you pick up the phone and you can’t hear jack but the caller can hear you sounding like a dumbass, or like a one-way mirror. Hey, the toilet door at Extrapool in Nijemegen was a one-way mirror, so you could be taking a shit (or worse) and have a perfect view of dudes in the lobby paying to get in, or of them trying to work out if the bog was free etc. Disconcerting for both parties.

Anyway, plenty of time for that later when I have the time, and when them goddamn motherfucking a-holes at NTL get their motherfucking Â£17:99 a goddamn month shit together, the fuckheads.

Nathan wrote that because I’m hungover in Germany and I can’t think what to type and we’re listening to Madness the band and THF Drenching and we ought to go out. Anyway, I’ve somehow added another date to the tour so check yr gigs section.

I know I was sending out emails announcing the Um European Winter Tour, but it wasn’t until the second Berlin date was added, and indeed a little bit of cognitive sedimentation time after that, that it dawned on me that I was actually going ON TOUR. You see, three dates in Europe isn’t a tour. Three dates is just a bit of unlikely random jammyness. Four dates, however, is undeniably and self-evidently a fucking TOUR, and I can’t quite believe it. Of course I have Felix Kubin and Simon Doling and my man Sascha (who I’ve never met) and my man Bernd (who I’ve never met) and Nathan Blunt and my lovely common-law wife Samantha to thank for all this, but nevertheless I’ve been at this wicked ART game for quite some time now and I’ve never been on no tour. For a fool on the hill (or in some physical relation to a hill, possibly over) such as myself, it is the very stuff of dreams!

So why am I having nightmares and kittens and cows and things about it then? Is it something to do with my legendary fear of aircraft travel? In a word, yes, plus I know that I’ll drink a hell of a lot of lager in Berlin with Nathan and Dallas Boner (see what a three-way obscurity orgy we’ll be smearing over each other â€“ it beats the time I went to Spain with Vert and Animals On Wheels, and our common-law wives, of course) and my mind and my body will be fucked by the time I get to the Netherlands. I’ll feel weird, remote, lonely and I’ll want to go home, but not in a plane. Hey, maybe I won’t. Maybe it’ll be FUN. Maybe the plane won’t crash.

If it does though, here are some funeral arrangements that I’ve hurriedly thrashed out. The basic idea is that a lot of people come, and a lot of people cry, especially the girls. Obviously there’ll be a musical theme, so I’ll, or rather, you’ll need:

A pout of flautists (I don’t know how many a pout is, and I’m not even sure that it’s a real term, but I suspect flutes could be amusing at funerals) Two hardcore drum and bass DJs to do minute interjections when the religious guy pauses. Richard Brown to do “New England.” Richard Rippin to do “Sugar Mountain.” Alex Zero to DJ “Electric Disco” by Plump DJs. Andrew Shires to do an awkward speech about my work. Steve Adams to get up and tell everyone that I was a complete cunt. Alexis to DJ an appropriate set. I’d also like to see Bobby J do “Shut The Fuck Up Kid” or “Ready for Love” or “There’s A Coach Comin’ In”, but obviously I wouldn’t be able to, and he might not fancy it either. We had discussed mechanically reanimating my corpse so that just before the cremation it would rise up out of the coffin and mime to Boney M’s “Rasputin” (including the “Oh, those Russians…” outro) but I don’t think I want to be cremated and it might get a bit tricky technically. I’d ask for Sam to do her amazing version of “Amazing Grace” but she’ll be in a right old state, obviously.

As you may or may not know, one of the things that I have many more of than I will ever have a need of is college scarves. I started buying them at jumble sales years ago and then it became compulsive. I have twenty or thirty I suppose. Tragic waste of a young life. Anyway, lately I’ve been rocking the scarf-as-accessory look, figuring they might as well be used. I decided that Cambridge, with the possible exception of Oxford, is probably the least cool place on earth to rock the college scarf, and that if I could rock the college scarf, it would logically follow that I was a motherfucker. Then the other day I was doing the Mill Road shuffle and that rather nice and polite Big Issue lady who stands outside Subway observed that my scarf was of the type worn by pupils at a local school for girls. Still I persevered with the scarf, but, today, a certain woman, occasionally seen on Mill Road, who walks with a crutch and appears to be possibly less than averagely able-minded, engaged my eye as I pushchaired past with Syd and mouthed: “I like your scarf.” So, if I am to consider myself a style-pimp, these are the people I have convinced thus far.